Gun Rights: If You Want Your "Piece", Prepare for War

Sierra Times ^

[Sir Gawain]

Gun Rights: If You Want Your "Piece",
Prepare for War
Sierra Times Staff
Published 03. 13. 2002 at 10:59 PST

The Second Amendment economic battles are escalating. The Anti-Self Defense Crowd is claming victory on another front. Apparently, we haven't even shown up to fight yet. Looks like we'd better keep the boxing gloves on, Real Americans. Next Target: H&R Block.

The issue here is another controversy over an affiliate marketing program. But in this case, it was a marketing agreement between H&R Block and the NRA via the NRA magazine, First Freedom.

Now, I know what some of you are saying: "Go to bat for the NRA??" When you read the complete press release below, you as that Real American Warrior must say to yourself: "The NRA may be sons a bitches, but in this case, they're OUR sons a bitches."

Here's your motivation - straight from the mouths of the Alliance for Justice's Gun Industry Watch:

"Let this send a loud message to other corporate partners of the NRA," said Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron. "If you support the NRA, we will work to make sure that your employees, customers, and all of your stakeholders know that you support an extremist gun lobby that is out of step with mainstream America."

Real Americans, we hope you didn't read that while eating (full text below).

So, it party time again. Here are the e-mail addresses:

bschneider@hrblock.com
cslayton@hrblock.com
lmcdougall@hrblock.com

This should be a no-brainer since most folks don't like paying taxes anyway. But there is more we have to investigate in this new war. Here's the take from one of Sierra Times stealth field operatives out on the front lines:

"All these companies KNOW we are going to beat the snot out of them. It is plain bad business to anger the pro-gun community. That tells me there is somebody with a bigger stick standing behind them. And I can only think of one possibility - the anti-rights people just don't have the numbers, much as they'd like people to think so. It almost has to be some element of the government."

Our take: Ladies and Gentleman, this is what you did not hear on September 11, 2001: "19 hijackers - Middle Easterners working with antigovernment extremists, purchased assault weapons via the gun-show loophole, use them to commandeer 4 commercial airliners and..."

You get the picture. In fact, everyone knows that if our side had it their way before 911, two skyscrapers would still be standing, the Pentagon would still have it's original 5 sides, over 3000 people might still be breathing, and they might still have an issue to debate. In our opinion, as the towers in New York City collapsed, so did the antigun movement. As a result, America is armed both with firepower, and the understanding that being defenseless for the sake of political correctness is simply unacceptable.

But like the Taliban, they are crawling out of the rubble vowing to fight to the bloody end. To Rosie, Sarah, Chucky Baby, Waxhead, Diane (I don't know how my gun killed that Mayor) Feinstein, California Barbie, and the rest of you - that's just FINE by us.

In this war, victory is important to both sides. WE ARE FIGHTING FOR OUR SURVIVAL. Hence, both sides will fight dirty. The victim-peddlers out there are licking their wounds over the freedom victories in statehouses across the country, and the fact that one of their cheerleaders, Butch Rosie, has been reduce to lobbying for gay adoptions (without armed bodyguards). Like Al Queda, they are being spoon-fed from a can of whup-ass, but they're just too ornery to surrender.

And thus, the next chapter on the domestic warfront has been opened. It's H&R Block folks. Some of us have already begun to fire back (text below press release). Happy Hunting.

The Ranch Hands at Sierra Times.com. Let's Roll!

Gun Violence Prevention Groups Claim Victory H&R Block Severs Ties with National Rifle Association

Washington, D. C. - In a stunning defeat for the gun lobby, H&R Block, the nation's largest tax preparation firm, today severed a controversial marketing agreement it had entered into with the National Rifle Association (NRA). H&R Block's withdrawal from the program came as a result of widespread protests spearheaded by the Alliance for Justice's Gun Industry Watch, and supported by the Million Mom March united with the Brady Campaign and the Mid-Atlantic Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence.

"Let this send a loud message to other corporate partners of the NRA," said Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron. "If you support the NRA, we will work to make sure that your employees, customers, and all of your stakeholders know that you support an extremist gun lobby that is out of step with mainstream America."

"The termination of this agreement is a tremendous victory for everyone who was outraged that a reputable business like H&R Block would support an extremist organization like the NRA," said Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence united with the Million Mom March. "Marketing your products to a specific group of people is an accepted business practice, but H&R Block crossed the line when it agreed to pay royalties to the NRA."

"Corporations doing business with the NRA should be very concerned by the large efforts of hundreds of gun safety activists that came out in defiance of H&R Block's agreement with the NRA," said Bryan Miller of the Mid-Atlantic Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence.

H&R Block had entered into an agreement with a marketing company called Memberdrive to market its products and services to NRA members. However, the agreement also provided for "royalties" paid by H&R Block, through Memberdrive, to the NRA. According an H&R Block advertisement that ran in the March issue of America's First Freedom, the NRA's magazine, H&R Block "will make a contribution to the NRA for every Member who becomes a new customer." Memberdrive's Senior Vice President of Marketing is Susan LaPierre, wife of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.

Gun Industry Watch, a student network, first exposed the agreement in late February, staging a protest outside of an H&R Block outlet in Washington, DC, and planning dozens more. Over the past two weeks, thousands of activists including those from the Million Mom March and the Brady Campaign joined with Gun Industry Watch and called, faxed and e-mailed H&R Block to express their objections to this agreement and to educate the company on the extremist positions that the NRA has taken in the past. With Gun Industry Watch recruiting students, Million Mom March recruiting its members and support from the Mid-Atlantic Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, protests of H&R Block offices in more than 50 cities had been planned for mid-March. These protests have now been called off.

"This victory shows the power of the gun control movement's grassroots," said Aron. "When you engage students and moms together, it's a potent combination."

"H&R Block now understands that, by agreeing to this royalty scheme, it was furthering the reckless political agenda of the NRA's leadership," said Mr. Barnes. "Congratulations to Gun Industry Watch and to all of our Million Mom March activists and members for making their voices heard."

Our side weighs in.

Gentlemen,

If you will check your files, you will find that I have had a long and fruitful association with H&R Block. I believe you folks have done my taxes for the better part of 15 years, maybe longer. But I have just learned of a decision on your part which, if not corrected immediately, will end that association.

I am speaking of your ill-informed decision to back out of a member affiliate arrangement with the NRA. The NRA has a long and honorable history of teaching firearms safety and lobbying to protect a right so important that the founders of this nation found it necessary to forbid government from infringing it. Criminological, sociological, and economic studies over the past 30 years have demonstrated conclusively how right they were. These results demonstrate that the two million or more instances of responsible citizens successfully defending themselves against violent criminals each year with firearms far outweigh the criminal uses. Estimates of the net economic benefit to society of private firearms ownership run into the tens of billions of dollars annually.

Persuasive as these utilitarian arguments may be, they pale in significance beside the philosophical ones propounded by the framers of the Constitution. They believed quite firmly that the ultimate authority in society must be the citizens, and that one of the most important guarantees of this bedrock American principle of freedom was an unfettered right to keep and bear arms.

You, sirs, have placed yourself squarely on the side of people advocating the direct violation of civil rights protected under the United States Constitution, and all but a bare handful of the state constitutions. I cannot in clear conscience continue to do business with any corporation who would make such a choice. So until I hear that H&R Block has rescinded this decision and apologized to the membership of the NRA, I will take my business elsewhere.

Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.

J. L. J.

[Sir Gawain]

Å

[Libertarian_4_eva]

bump

[Pyro7480]

"There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy."
-George Washington

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Life member NRA dittos.

[.38sw]

The NRA is an extremist organization?!! Good grief. Seems to me that Sarah Brady's bunch are the extremists. how have we come to the point in this country where anyone who thinks that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution mean something, is an extremist?

[PatrioticAmerican]

"To secure peace is to prepare for war."

[wku man]

Sent my e-mail. Let's see how far it gets us.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[glc1173@aol.com]

As of 5:57 P.M., H&R Block had neither a press release nor any other remark about it having cut off dealing with NRA on its Web site.

Evidently - even assuming the antigun lobby's spin that it wasn't just a decision by H&R Block to end dealings with all advocacy groups, not just NRA - the tax-prep outfit isn't that worried about telling the whole world in order to mollify potential clients who are this supposed antigun "grassroots" that the antigun lobby says broke up this deal!

Scandals of antigun activists and politicians - and how-to guide for "outing" liberals!

[Sir Gawain]

For anyone interested, this was passed along to me:

http://www.hrblock.com/press_r elations/content/pr_2001_29.ht ml?source=pressArchive

"AOL Time Warner and H&R Block Announce Multi-Year Strategic Marketing Alliance

AOL Software To Be Promoted To H&R Block's Millions of U.S. Tax Office Clients

FOR RELEASE AUG 28, 2001

NEW YORK, NY and KANSAS CITY, Mo. - AOL Time Warner (NYSE: AOL) and H&R Block Inc. (NYSE:HRB) today announced an exclusive multi-year alliance that will enable both companies to market their products and services to millions of new customers nationwide. Under the agreement, H&R Block becomes the preferred tax services provider across several America Online brands and launches marketing across AOL Time Warner's online, ..."

[Hitlerys uterus]

I sent my e-mails. I hope they do simplify the tax system just so these rat bastards go out of buiseness!

[Shooter 2.5]

Wrong. I'm going to make sure I go to H & R Block to get my taxes done. I read about the agreement and I made sure that my taxes will be done by them. When H & R Block was getting picketed, the Freepers were there as a show of support but I didn't hear a thing from anyone else except the NRA.

When they made the agreement, the outpouring of support by the gunowners should have been incredible. It wasn't. Now they quit the agreement, because of a lack of support from our side. We may be hell on our enemies but we're lousy friends.

[Revolutionary]

Without the 2nd Amendment, the rest of the constitution is totally meaningless.

If Gore had been President when 9-11 hit, we would now be under Marshall Law and the government would be confiscating our guns. All under the guise of our safety. And with the on going danger, it would be too dangerous to hand the Presidency over to some one inexperienced. He would just have to cancel all elections, again for our safety and security.

[Knightsofswing]

Sir; Don't forget about Gun Owners of America. They have a NO COMPORMISE POSTION ON ANY GUN CONTROL ISSUE!!!

[El Gato]

The NRA is an extremist organization?!!

Yea, I was ROTFLAMAO when I first read that. NRA is the least extreme pro 2nd amendment organization in the country. These guys who think NRA and Heston are so extreme should talk with Larry Pratt or Arron Zelman (GOA and JFPO respectively

[MissAmericanPie]

Thanks for the heads up on this. Email sent.

[There's millions of'em]

"When they made the agreement, the outpouring of support by the gunowners should have been incredible. It wasn't. Now they quit the agreement, because of a lack of support from our side. We may be hell on our enemies but we're lousy friends."

Dood, there are 10,000 Block offices, tax season still has 30 days to go and Block has what, 20 million customers?

So, how in the world can you allow yourself to make such a stoopid statement?

Did you think there for a moment that you knew the results?

Nice try, but please, by all means go to H&R Block to have your taxes done,

[the]

[cmotormac44]

I just wish we 'freepers' would learn how to spell---it is MARTIAL law, by the way---Marshall had "nothing to do with it--

[cmotormac44]

got my reply regards learning how to spell knocked off QUICK---ignorance is invited, correction and good grammer evidently is not--